How to be a REAL Norse Heathen / Asatru / Pagan

How to be a Heathen? Asatru online course

Starting Heathenry

Starting Heathenry is a NEW ritual-focused online course which will furnish you with the knowledge and confidence you need to practise the Germanic Heathen religion alone or with others, making wise decisions about worship based on reliable historical evidence.

The course teaches you how to construct Heathen prayers for yourself, not according to the established rites of any modern group, but according to what historical sources show. Starting Heathenry assumes you are interested in Germanic paganism, know about the gods and myths, and want to begin practising this religion, but require guidance on how to do so.

Key points are displayed in videos as bullet-points to help you remember them

 

Micro-learning

A modern way of learning an ancient religion

Starting Heathenry is based on a micro-learning structure which is proven to improve knowledge retention by 18-80% in students compared to other learning methods. The 10 lessons include over 50 videos, and quizzes to access from your phone or computer. Absorb more than 5 hours of learning material bit by bit, as it suits you. Within just 20 minutes after a hearing a lecture or reading a book, 50% of newly learned information is forgotten. Over the next 9 hours, that number drops by a further 10%, and after a month, only 24% of the information remains without revision or repeat learning. Micro-learning is designed so you retain the knowledge over a long period. I previously worked on crafting such learning material for the WHO to help health care professionals learn about the dangers of side effects from medicines. Now I am using the same technique to help Heathens learn to worship the gods of their ancestors.

Enroll today. Your path to knowing the gods through ritual starts here.

NEW DNA Genetic Origin of the Indo-Europeans: Yamnaya/Sredny Stog

 

A new paper called The Genetic Origin of the Indo-Europeans (2024) reveals that the Proto-Indo-European languages originated in the Yamnaya and Sredny Stog cultures of Ukraine and South Russia. The split of PIE languages from Anatolian languages is revealed to have taken place on the steppe (lower Volga). Sredny Stog DNA is found in Central Anatolian Bronze Age Hittite samples proving the real IE people were indeed Steppe herders from Eastern Europe and not an unknown Armenian population as previously claimed in 2022. I discuss the findings in this stream.

Why are May bonfires important?

 

 

In many regions of Europe people celebrate May day, or the day before, by lighting bonfires. In Ireland they call it Beltaine, in Sweden they call it Valborg, and in both countries you will see people gather around enormous fires. But why?

The roots go back not only to the pagan religions of Celtic and Germanic Europe, but even further, to their shared origins. The earliest reference to Beltane in Ireland is from the 10th century and associates it with bonfires and a Celtic pagan god whose name is something like Belenus. This god has Indo-European roots as we also see a Slavic equivalent called Belobog “The white god” and an English god called Bældæg.

Swedes gather at the ancient barrows of Gamla Uppsala while the Valborg fire burns behind them

 

The Bel part of Beltane and Belenus means “bright” and is cognate with the Old English bæl meaning “bale” as in bale-fire “funeral fire/bonfire”. Bældæg is a god attested in Anglo-Saxon royal genealogies as the son of the god Woden. His name means “bale day” or “pyre day” and he is the same god as the Norse Baldr, son of Odin. In Norse myth the god Baldr is associated specifically with a funeral pyre and this is likely the reason for the name Bældæg “pyre day”.

The name of the Anglo-Saxon Saint Walburga replaced earlier names for the May fire festivals in Germany and Sweden which became Walpurgis and Valborg respectively. But thanks to Grimm we know that previously the Germans celebrated Pholtag “Phol day” and Phol is also another name for the god Baldr.

 

 

The evidence from Germany and England confirms that Baldr was the god of the Spring bonfire in the Germanic regions of Europe, while the Gaelic regions had a similar custom for their god Belenus.

The EU has introduced a new law which bans May bonfires and therefore infringes on the religious rights of European pagans to practise their ancient customs. Our right to practice our religion must be defended at all costs.


READ AND WATCH MORE:

VIDEO: May day traditions in Cornwall and Devon 

May Day and Easter have Pagan origins 

VIDEO: Pagan May Ritual in North Devon: The Earl of Rone 

Tories threaten May day (2011) 

VIDEO: 1953 May rites in Padstow 

The Origin of Palaeo-Germanic in Sweden? A new pre-print.

‘Steppe Ancestry in western Eurasia and the spread of the Germanic Languages’ by McColl et al 2024 uses a novel method looking at IBD sharing to identify a previously unknown sub-population within Scandinavia’s Corded Ware culture which it calls “East Scandinavian”. 

    This population is alleged to have formed around 2000 BC which is 800 years after Corded Ware folk first entered Scandinavia. It is distinct from earlier Corded Ware populations in the region, and contemporary Corded Ware people in Denmark and Norway, because instead of just WHG admixture it has additional EHG admixture from a source their model predicts to come from Latvia/Lithuania. 

    The authors suggest a possible migration across the Baltic sea to explain this East Scandi group despite there being no evidence for this in the archaeological record. They point out that the “timing coincides with the introduction of a new, Late Neolithic sheep breed to Scandinavia. It also coincides with the spread of a new burial rite of gallery graves in south Sweden, the Danish islands and Norway, a new house type, the first durative bronze networks, as well as with the end of an east-west divide in Scandinavia between 4050 and 3650 BP. (2050 BC- 1650 BC)” Yet none of these new arrivals they list necessarily came from across the Baltic sea. 

 

    The feasibility of a mass migration of a people across the Baltic at this period in history is questionable. Sea crossings from the South are far more plausible or even land routes via the Arctic North. Figure 4.A shows the geographical distribution of individual samples belonging to the 3 Scandinavian Clusters they identified existing prior to 800 BC, after which they merged. They say there is a strong correspondence between the clusters and specific haplogroups as follows: 

1. Early Scandinavian including the oldest Swedish (Battle Axe Culture) and Danish samples and almost all Norwegians all have R1a. 
2. A later ‘Southern Scandinavian’ cluster restricted to Denmark and the southern tip of Sweden mostly with R1b but some I1. 
3. A second later ‘Eastern Scandinavian’ cluster, spread across Sweden and overlapping with that of the Southern Scandinavia cluster which is dominated by I1. 

     The third map of this so-called “Eastern Scandi” group shows mainly samples from the South though, and the I1 haplogroup distribution is not demonstrated to have come from the “East”, in fact it appears from this data to have come from the south. We already have an I1 sample from North Germany dating to 3300 BC, older than these samples, so by tying this newly identified group to the I1 haplogroup, they have brought into question their own claim that it has a Baltic origin. This will only be settled with the discovery of an I1 sample in a Corded ware context dating to around 2700 BC. 

 They admit that it is now necessary to confirm “the proposed Bronze Age source of the East Scandinavians along the Baltic coast.” My own view is that the elevated EHG ancestry in this East Scandi group may incorrectly have been identified as Latvian in origin due merely to a sampling bias, and lack of SHG samples. The elevated EHG in Sweden seems more plausible to be local and the I1 is most likely to have entered Scandinavia from the South, not across the Baltic. The reliability of their IBD method depends on the reference samples used. 

While I question their conclusions about the origin of this East Scandi group, I am more convinced by their suggestion that it was responsible for the spread of the ancestor of what became Palaeo-Germanic language in the period between 1050 BC - 500 BC when it borrowed from Celtic and into Finno-Saamic. They show that after 2000 BC the East Scandi group expanded into Denmark and Norway. The mixing of East Scandi with South Scandi is dated between 1700 BC-1400 BC which spans both Nordic Bronze age 1 and 2 and directly precedes the construction of the famous Kivik tomb in Scania around 1400 BC. 

 

This mixing event formed the Iron Age Scandinavian genetic profile such that by the Iron Age Jutland can be entirely modelled with the admixed Danish Bronze age source, while Iron Age Norway and the Danish Isles also have additional East Scandi admixture on top of the initial Bronze Age mixing, showing further migrations of these intrepid East Scandis. They say this admixed Iron Age Southern Scandinavian group is “central to understanding the Germanic dispersal” and I agree. We can trace the spread of IA South Scandi ancestry into Germany, Britain and the Netherlands. The findings about Germanic expansion in the historical period are very interesting too.

Odin's Role as God of Runes and Galdra

Returning to the topic of the highest god, Odin. First I address why the Romans weren't entirely wrong when they compared him to Mercury/Hermes. Then I present my theory about how Odin learned the nine sacred songs called Galdra and why this is related to his role as the god of the runes. The dankest god, Odin, and esoteric theories go together like runes and galdra. I look at the origins of runes themselves and the usage of runes in conjunction with galdra and thus seek to solve the mystery of the runes and the god who first learned them on the world tree. 

The First Britons were Black? JIVE TALK